Student Corner - 258

Demographic Segmentation

To undertake effective marketing campaign, in an efficient way, it is very essential you should exercise market segmentation.  Any business man knows that all cannot be his customers and there has never been a company that catered to the needs of the entire population. It is just common sense. Therefore it becomes imperative on your part to find out who will be your customers. Segmentation comes in a big way to help you find out your prospective customers. That is, your prospective customer must be able to purchase your products. He must make purchase-decisions. That means you must know what are the factors that might be influencing his purchase-decisions. It is said by experts that some four major factors must be considered in discussing factors that might lead to purchase-decisions; they are culture, economy, personal factors and social factors. In a way they all overlap; all can be brought under any one of them; for example, under economy all other factors can be considered as its components.  Now, let us see each factor and say a few words about them.

Take culture; it is a very complex thing to discuss; yet, some basic facts can be looked into. Let us not forget that we are discussing it from the marketing perspective. Culture is said to be a way of life; that is, common beliefs, rituals, conventions and traditions—all these things are shared by a group of people. A group of people is again called a community; and society is made up of many communities. Every community will have certain values they cherish and live by and sometimes live for. Society is made up of communities; and communities made up of families. A family is looked upon as a basic unit of any community and in all communities, there are family traditions which are unwritten laws and they have to be safeguarded and any violation of these traditions is considered anti-social. Now, in this small brief background, see how segmentation functions. Generally, man, the father, the husband is considered the head of the family. All decisions are subject to his approval. Now we come acrossunemployed, financial resourcelesshead of a family; and the mother, the wife is a bread winner. She earns for the family. All look up to her for money, including the husband. Here, the earning woman has to consult her husband for any purchase and get his consent. We find purchase-decisions are made and approved by one who does not earn money. Leave alone the wife, if son or daughter, if they want to buy something, they need money and they get it from their mother and mother also willingly gives money to them for their purchase. Here purchase decisions are made by sons and daughters for their needs.

When your company is producing products for younger generations without financial resource, still, when you plan marketing, you focus on, say, sons and daughters and not on earning members of the family. Here segmentation is based on age. Personal factors and social factors are playing here. There are other basic facts of segmentation; we shall see them in our next.